A Changing World
by Fallynleaf
Summary: Hadriax and Alessandros revisit a familiar situation, except this time things turn out... differently. Rated "T" for references to prostitution. Alessandros/Hadriax.


**Note:** This was my first slash fic as well as my first slash ship. I wrote it a while ago, but didn't end up posting it then because everyone seemed to think that I'm crazy for suggesting that Hadriax and Alessandros were more than just friends. If I still had a copy of First Rider's Call, I would single out some quotes that caused me to interpret this relationship as I did, because there certainly is some evidence that leaves it ambiguous.

I would also like to point out the seeming similarity in name and position of Alessandros and Hadriax to Alexander the Great and Hephaestion. This may or may not be a coincidence, but I find it a fascinating parallel.

* * *

**_A Changing World_**

Screams touched Alessandros' ears, and he turned away, hidden beneath the folds of fabric forming his hood. How strange, that now, in a world so different… It was all the very same.

Hadriax shoved a body onto the floor, discarding his jacket. Alessandros swept over to the battered woman's side, grasping her chin in his cold hand and scouring her face with his eyes of night. Another body landed beside her, blood oozing from her lips and marring their perfect beauty.

"Where did you find them? In a tavern, as witnesses to a drunken brawl?" he scoffed, releasing the pretty face and standing back at a distance, avoiding all eyes as they sought his own, not even letting Hadriax enter his sight.

"No, in fact they begged me to take them. I believe they assumed I would slip them a coin."

"Really, are you that low class, Hadriax? I am ashamed." It was familiar, wonderfully so, and Alessandros hadn't realized how he had longed for such parts of his past, when there was no longer this war-strained tension between he and the other man, his greatest and most loyal friend.

"I thought you would appreciate a break, no matter how low class. The other generals don't need to know." Hadriax's eyes sparkled, this individuality, a soul separate from Alessandros' own that he only revealed his possession of during these private moments between them, shining in all its glory.

"What if I don't want these women?" Alessandros stepped away, feeling his face take on a new look, feral and cruel. Coincidentally, the step brought him nearer to Hadriax.

"Then I can fetch you others. They shouldn't be that hard to find or coerce."

"What if I don't want other women?" Alessandros was smirking, freedom and power surging in his veins. He could do everything, invincible in this one night, blessed by God with the power of the _etherea._

"Then, we shouldn't be needing these." Hadriax shoved the women onto the street, drawing his sword until they fled in doe-eyed fear. "So, then what do you want?" he asked, standing stiffly on the doorstep. Alessandros caught his nerve and suppressed anticipation and shuddered with glee. This was wrong, completely wrong.

"What I want, God does not condone." He found himself saying, a last attempt of his conscious to restrain his thoughts from following their current trail. Hadriax, whom he loved like a brother, as a friend, and even as a… "I want you."

Hadriax slammed the door shut, sliding the bolt in place. He obviously feared eavesdroppers, and this was too precarious, too dangerous to escape. "How can God dare condemn love, Alessandros?" he said quietly, leaning his head wearily against the coarse grain of the wood. "He can't, he mustn't. The others, the men of our army may dare, but not Him." There was nothing else but silence, layered with heavy breathing, and Alessandros felt like stone, made cold and clammy in what remained unsaid.

"I want things to be as they used to, before Sacoridia…" he managed, turning away again from the solid figure at the door. "When we were only men… no, when we were children, and I knew how to love. I don't anymore, Hadriax, I have power, yes, I have power, but I cannot love."

"Then tonight, rather than being men, you wish us to be children? Do we play with sailboats rather than with women?" Hadriax was very near, his warmth merging with Alessandros' own cold.

"I want to be free, Hadriax, dear friend of mine. That's all I want tonight. God can take Arcosia for all I care." Alessandros' head was spinning and he didn't know how to stop these terrible things from leaping from his mouth, or if he should even try. "I don't want the army, any general, or a God disapproving of the only thing that keeps me alive." He pointedly avoided Hadriax's gaze, not sure what he would find there and worried that it wouldn't be what he hoped to see.

"What would make you free?" they were close, mere centimeters apart, and the room seemed large in the great expanse of space left unoccupied in their nearness.

"…Haven't I told you, Hadriax, that I love no one better?" Alessandros turned and found his face perilously close to the other man's. It summoned a silly jolt in his pulse and he found that he no longer cared for right and wrong.

Hadriax's expression was peculiar and unrecognizable, a jumble of amusement, loyalty, melancholy and something raw and untouched. He leaned forward as Alessandros did, and clumsily they found each other and their lips met, the awkwardness of two men accustomed to war fading into something alike to childish innocence. It lasted less than a second, and Alessandros' emotions fluctuated and bloomed into bliss.

"Hadriax, _my_ Hadriax, don't you know that I only wish to find immortality so that I can spend eternity with you at my side, us as rulers of the world?"

Alessandros found himself leaning into Hadriax before he could answer, and in that moment everything else vanished and they were alone in a changing world. _There will no longer be a need for a god. _We_ will be as gods and the world will be ours and no one will be able to forbid our love._

**_End_**


End file.
